Shadow of a Sword

“I really REALLY hope Bladey likes his welcome to Ponyville party, guys! I hope Twilight isn’t going to ground him from the party for getting in trouble at school, though.” Pinkie Pie lamented as she bounced around the castles entry hall.

“Pinkie, I know you throw everyone a ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party, but I don’t think you should this time. And that’s coming from me! I love your parties!” Rainbow Dash interrupted, Pinkie turning to her with a slightly hurt look in your eyes.

“Raiiiinbow! Why would you want to hurt the colt like that?” Pinkie whined,

“It’s not that, Pinkie! I just think that he might not like your type of parties. He seems like the type to prefer parties where someone ends up crying at the end.”

Thats when they heard the Castle doors open. Twilight was still trying to convince Blade to talk about his memories and emotions, but when Blade entered through the doors and saw all of the party supplies, he simply kept walking through the room.

“Twilight! Why did you bring him back? We’re not ready yet. None of the guest have arrived! I’m sorry, Bladey, your parties not ready yet, but if you just leave for a while you can come back and pretend to be surprised!” Pinkie offered,

“Why?” Blade asked flatly,

“What?” Pinkie stopped bouncing, tilting her head quizzically.

“Why should I return later? If you have some sort of government function planned, the castle is easily large enough that if you lock me in my room no one will notice.” Blade explained, unaware of just how disturbing the solution he offered was.

“Silly, Bladey! This party is your ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party! It would be really strange if the guest of honor wasn’t here! Well, I guess if you don’t feel like being surprised, then you can wait till everyone arrives. Here, have a cupcake!” Pinkie squee’d as she held out a hoof with a green frosted cupcake on it.

Before Blade could truly understand how, Pinkie had grabbed his hoof and set the cupcake in it. “This is food, I assume?” Blade asked, unsure of a lot in this moment. This “cupcake” was like nothing he had every smelled.

The idea of a surprise was not new, he knew a few surprises; attack, injury, sickness. Parties though that was something that he could not help but feel raised the level of stupid in the room by several degrees. Back home, everyone knew that parties were a waste of resources. You might have a small family get together for special events, but all these wasteful accruements; balloons, paper ribbons, and a massive amount of chaff from a missile blocking system though? Blade decided, it might be worth eating this strange thing. His lunch had not been large, and any food might help with the healing of his internal organs. He shrugged internally and took a bite.

The first bite out of the cupcake created an immediate reaction. He vomited. In Blade’s entire life he had never tasted anything so vile. It reminded him of the one time he been lucky enough to get fresh strawberries. It cost him a friend’s life for that reward… but this was so much sweeter. It was as if someone had taken sweetness itself and made it a form. To Blade, those strawberries had been the sweetest thing he had ever eaten and had made him sick to his stomach later. He had sworn off them ever again. He could not help but retch and vomit. His body was going into full rejection of this very strange item.

“Ok, now I am curious what could be so horrible that it made you, the one that ate out garbage, throw up.”

“Poison.” Blade snarled, dropping the other half of the cupcake and summoning a blade to keep Pinkie well out of hoofs range.

“That’s a leap, don’t you think?”

Rainbow Dash got between them. “Hey! I don’t know who you think you are kid, but Pinkie is the nicest pony you could ever meet, she would never poison anyone!”

Blade was thinking it through now. Pinkie was clearly not capable of planning an assassination attempt, yet there was no denying that the food was clearly poisoned.

“See Bladey? It’s perfectly safe!” She babbled as she took the dirty fallen cupcake and ate it in a single bite. Blade allowed the sword to vanish; No one ate a poisoned food after trying to poison someone. Twilight had gotten used to Blades seemingly random reactions to mundane things and trotted over to the desert table and picked up a cupcake of her own. Taking a bite, she made a happy content face. “I don’t know what you’re taking about, Blade Dancer. These taste amazing, as usual.”

“They taste vile.” Blade said with force.

“Blade, do you know what the word sugar means?” Twilight said thinking about possible reason Blade might think of poison.

Blade eyes narrowed. “Of course, sugar is a highly controlled substance by the Ultick on my world. It is a Class 1 offense to be caught with even less than a gram of it. Punishment is the torture and death of everyone in the suspects family. It not really surprising, since it is worth several times its weight in rare metals.” This seemed to cause all the girls to be taken aback.

“Oh! What about honey?” Pinkie interjected,

Blade looked at her with even more shock. “That’s even more valuable! All known forms of sweeteners are Class 1 controlled substances. They have satellites that track every gram of it globally, and if even a single bit is used in used in an area by anyone besides a Master, it would be a justifiable reason to have the total population eliminated.”

At this, the girls all seemed reacted with revulsion. After a moment to clear her head, Twilight spoke up again, “Pinkie, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the cupcakes… I think Blade has had so little experience with sweet foods that he can’t handle something so sweet so he reads it poison, that’s why he had a bad reaction.”

Blade was now staring at the dessert table as Twilight turned to speak to him, “What would you say if I said that each of those cupcakes had about eleven grams of sugar in them?”

Blade head snapped around to the alicorn. “I would say that you’re mad. That would mean that there is enough wealth on that table to get an entire family off-world and out of Ultick controlled space. A massive amount of money.”

“You left out the part about having enough money left over to buy enough Blow to keep me going for the rest of my life”

“In your universe, but here in Equestria, it is considered a very cheap substance. I could get you a whole pound of sugar for just five bits.”

Blade seemed to think about this for a moment before accepting it. “Still tastes horrible.”

“Well, Bladey,” Pinkie chimed backed in, “I guess you’re not going to enjoy that part of the party, but I still have lots of games and music!” At this point Pinkie inserted a small crystal into a gramophone-like device that seemed to be playing from a crystal placed in the device.

“It sounds like someone tried to make music for a bunny rabbit but went way too cute.” It’s sound grated on all music teaching that his fleshes mother had woven in. At this point a sword came up out of the ground and knocked the Gramophone over.

Pinkie stopped and looked hurt for just a moment, “Well… how about games? I have Pin the tail on the pony… or how about hide and seek?” She asked with asked with strained excitement. Blade’s face seemed to answer all of Pinkie’s questions. “I guess that’s a no then?”

Blade let out an aggressive sigh, “What is the purpose of engaging in such useless behavior? I had not made a great deal of progress in understanding the strange things you ponies do, but most of them seem to have some sort of purpose in the world in which you live in. You on the other hand, seem to be a waste of air. I wonder if that why as a filly your parents sent you to live somewhere else. I suggest you find something actually useful to do with your life.” The others gasped as Pinkie’s mane deflated her smiled collapsed and she seemed to be on the verge of crying.

“I just wanted to make you happy…” She sniffled as her voice became a whine that was at a volume one would more expect from Fluttershy. Of course, Blade left the room as most of the other mares in the room seemed to go through a few different emotions. Shock was first, the very idea of saying things like that to Pinkie of all ponies. It was followed by disgust, as they all felt that it was simply unnatural and wrong for him to even feel that way, they had pit so much work into this, it was supposed to be a celebration! Lastly, came anger.

Rainbow was the first to speak up, “Twilight we should just get rid of this colt! Throw his keister right out on the street! We’ve been trying to help him and make him comfortable since he got here, especially Pinkie! What gives him the right to talk to her like that!?” She screamed.

That broke Applejack out of her shock, “Hold on just a cotton-picking minute, Rainbow. He is entailed to his opinion even if it wrong. Yet the way he said that made me think there more to the apple then the skin.”
“Pinkie, I’m sorry, but you should probably cancel the party. I don’t think he’s in the mood and I’m not sure anyone else is either…” Twilight remarked.

Pinkie was already taking down her party supplies, sniffling. “It’s alright, Twilight. I kinda knew before I started what was gonna happen. My Pinkie sense told be even before the storm that he needed help. I guess I got ahead of myself. I can’t start with a party, I’ve gotta work him up to it.”, Her voice was low, and her eyes would not meet any of the others.

“What in Tartarus was that, Blade!?” Twilight exclaimed.

Blade was sitting in the library, reviewing books on the basics of reading that Cheerilee had given him the day before as Twilight barged in, glaring at him.

“What, Twilight?” Blade asked, not even looking up from his children’s book.

“Is it not obvious? She talking about your total lack of diplomacy you rage-ass.”

“What? What!? What about what you just did to Pinkie? What about how you insulted her entire life’s work and even went after the strange connection she has to her family?! That was not ok. She provides an important service, the way that all party planners do in Equestria. She helps ponies be happy!”

“Party Planner? That sounds like a very dangerous thing to have.” Blade stated nonchalantly, finally looking up from his book.

“What?” Twilight muttered, still not accustomed to Blade’s monotone

“Parties are something done by the wealthy and powerful in a show of wealth and torturing resources. Wasting resources by the non-powerful is a good way to leave a large portion of your entire countries population hungry and starved. The fact you have entire job classes whose purpose is to waste limited resources and lead to the greater scarcity is strange.”

“Ugh, there he goes rambling about our world again.”

Twilight collected herself and tried to approach the situation more calmly before continuing, “That, at least, seems to put some perspective on things, but I going to have to ask for some clarification on a few things. First, why would a Pinkie party be such a drain on resources?”

“The amount of food a country can produce is limited by land and limiting factors of the planet’s seasonal growth cycle. In Pinkie’s party, a large amount of food existed with empty calories that would not maximize caloric resources. Those ingredients could have been used for more efficient foods. Secondly, time that is the most important resource at all. Wasting it on things like those silly games is taking time away from resource gathering that could better your countries standing against the other nations on your planet.”

This new information had Twilight put her thinking face on. “I think I am beginning to understand. Let me show you something.” Twilight decided to take this moment and to make it a lesson for the colt, walking over to a small plant that was growing in a hoof sized pot, it was not even far enough along to tell what it was going to grow into. She placed a hoof on the pot and focused as much earth pony magic as she could. It suddenly began to grow as fast as the eye could see. It was something that Blade could not even begin to understand, only the most powerful Gardener Esper could make a plant grow so fast and they needed far more soil. Within a second, it was clear that the plant was a sunflower. It grew five full flowers over the course of thirty seconds, almost knocking the pot over.

Blade stared, “That’s… not possible. That pot does not have enough material to produce the amount of matter that exist in those flowers.” Though Blade face had not changed, it was very obvious he was confused, the flower was far outside his world view.

Twilight smiled, “Actually, by using Earth Pony magic it is possible. The inherent magic of an Earth Pony can replace the energy from sunlight and the nutrients from the soil. Creating matter is common side effect of Earth Pony magic but normally it’s a process of years. Being a Alicorn, I have far more magic in any field then most ponies, it’s possible for me to make things grow much faster than most earth ponies. Though, growing this fast reduces the flowers health and nutritional value. Most earth ponies would have made this grow over the course of about two weeks to produce the healthiest results the fastest.”

Blade was staring at the flower. “This is not possible… the amount of energy needed… the rules of entropy would make such a system impossible unless you were… No. That violates one of the most basic rules of physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed.”

“Ohhh… Hoofstein’s theorem. That was disproven hundreds of years ago. It’s been proven that Magic is created from combining emotion, which is ethereal, and life energy, which is material. As a result, energy can be created infinitely, but it is nearly impossible to destroy energy.”

“No. That is not possible. Do you live in Exotropic universe? No. Those destroy life, nothing can live in a Exotropic universe. They are just not possible!” Blade said with a slightly raised voice, the most emotion he had shown so far.

“That’s not true. Our universe is Exotropic and we have a thriving universe.”

“If that true, then your entire planet should be burning. If you keep adding energy to a system, then everything would just spiral out of control. The only functional system is in which everything passes into the cold as the universe runs out.” With that Blade seemed to go into a daze as he tried to process this impossibility. “We’ve examined other universes, hundreds of them. All of them are Entropic, there is just not another way for a universe to be stably run.”

“I know you’re not used to it, but it’s true.” She became more sterner as she remembered why she had followed after him. “I also think that that you owe some apologies to Pinkie. You made a great deal of assumptions today and hurt her feelings. You need to understand that what you did was wrong.”

Blade snapped out of his daze. “I still disagree with her existence. My opinion of her has not changed. She with her strange powers could be useful for a great deal more. She is a waste of talent.”

“What? That makes no sense given everything you just learned. How is Pinkie a waste?”

“Happiness is dangerous. The first lesson that I was taught as a child is that for one person to have happiness someone has to pay with an even greater amount of pain and despair. Someone like Pinkie who spreads happiness with no thought to the Despair she can also bring is reckless.”

Twilight shook her head in exasperation, “Ok, that’s it, you clearly come from the craziest ideology I have ever seen.”

Now it was Blade’s turn to be confused again. “What do you mean? That is not an ideology, it is a proven fact of existence. Everyone knows this.”

Twilight was beginning to understand Blade. He was, according to Discord, a hero. Yet, in his universe, the very act of being happy could bring forth despair in others. He’d chosen to live a life of misery in order to allow others to have some small measure of happiness.

“Blade…” She hesitated, “I can’t really be mad at you for what happened with Diamond Tiara, you did not understand because I failed to inform you about pony biology. Yet, what you did with Pinkie is not acceptable. You must respect that this world is different. If you want to have that fight with my brother when he comes back here with the other Princesses, you will apologize to Pinkie and you will make a point of becoming more accepting of views different than yours.”

“Wish you luck with that one, Royal horse. He didn’t even get along with his fellow bastards.”

Blade narrowed his eyes. “I might have a child’s body in this world, but I am far more mature than you. I have seen and done things you can’t imagine.” He let out a exhale, which Twilight almost misinterpreted as a sigh, “I will agree to apologize for no other reason than to prevent tensions with you, but do not believe that I have changed anything. If you want me to find a more balanced way of living in your world then I suggest allowing me to do as I please instead of treating me like a toy that you are interested in. I am a weapon. If you wish to use me, then you must use me as such. This nonsense of you placing your beliefs of my personal existence on mine is going to continue to cause trouble.

“Well, I don’t think that will get you anywhere”

“School is so that you have a basic understanding of how our world works so you can blend in, you ignorant colt. Think bigger picture. If you want to live in Equestria you must be able to convince those you interact with that you are not a threat!” Twilight explained, exasperated.

Blade answered as coldly as ever. “I am a threat. I am a weapon that has no other purpose other than to kill en masse. The knowledge of how this world works is only going to distract from my functions and prevent from completing my mission.” He shook his head, “I am going to my room, I need to do far more mental repair then I first believed and after what happened to Diamond Tiara it would be best if I am left alone.”

With that, Blade left, closing his door right as Twilight was about make a retort. Twilight was unsure. Yes, Blade had agreed to apologize, yet, despite how heated the argument had gotten Blade’s voice had barely risen. His face had not so much as twitched. Perhaps Blade was telling the true and that for his species he had been far older than her and had a higher level of maturity for his kind. His world’s adults did seem to act cruel just for the sake of being cruel in order to earn their own happiness. Yet why did nothing fit?